RFC: Separation of JTreg tool into independent project

[Pavel Tisnovsky]

Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 02:24:03PM +0200, Pavel Tisnovsky wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> some time ago I discussed with Andrew John Hughes about the separation
>> of JTreg tool from the IcedTea6 and IcedTea7 projects. In summary (ie
>> how I understand this task): JTreg should be developed as independent
>> project and in the future they should be synchronized with recent JTreg
>> version (used by Oracle guys AFAIK).
>>
> 
> Yes, but that's not what this patch seems to do.  It just moves the source
> code out of the tree into a zip somewhere.  I was envisaging jtreg being
> a separate project like the visualvm one with its own build infrastructure.
> You'd then point configure at an installed jtreg.jar.  That could be built
> from the IcedTea jtreg project or alternatively, you could use the one
> Oracle provide if you were willing to accept the proprietary licensing
> this entails.

I see, thank you for explanation.

So I'll create new project (hopefully on icedtea.classpath.org - Mark?)
which will contains classic autotools-based build (configure & make &
make install) with the default output to /usr/share/java/jtreg.jar or to
a selected directory, right?

> 
>> In the attachment there's very first version of patched Makefile.am from
>> IcedTea6 HEAD. When user call command 'make jtreg' from command line,
>> archive containing stable version of JTreg tool sources is downloaded
>> into 'drops/' subdirectory, then this archive is unzipped into 'test/'
>> subdirectory and then JTreg is compiled & run as usual.
>>
>> This functionality is similar as in the case of JAXP and JAXWS - these
>> two parts of JDK are also separated from JDK sources.
>>
> 
> Yes, and it's one of the most annoying things Oracle have ever done, as
> there's no change visibility.  I've been thinking about reverting it
> in the IcedTea tree so at least we can see the changes between zips
> if not at the changeset level.
> 
>> What do you think about this solution (which could be the same for
>> IcedTea6 and IcedTea7, also *probably* for IcedTea-web)?
>>
> 
> Why would IcedTea-Web need jtreg?

Personally I think that some work on IcedTea-web tests can be made more
easily using jtreg tool. To be more specific: jtreg is able to run only
selected tests using GUI and/or using various annotations, it could kill
the test which is in endless loop (or waiting for packer or so), store
standard output and error output into one JTR file etc. I don't think
that jtreg will replace JUnit, but for reproducers or more complex tests
it's IMHO more usable tool.

> 
>> Cheers,
>> Pavel